Ignatz Isaac Kron

Ignatz Kron (born 1851) came to Vienna from a very poor family in Gewitsch (Jevíčko), a village in Moravia (Czechoslovakia), where he started as a carter, possibly moving furniture. He worked all day and studied at night and was extremely fond of designing. He left his home town as a young man and moved to Vienna to try his luck. Those were the days when the railway system started, connecting between the cities, a period of industrializtion in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (this system included the Sued-Bahn, which connected Vienna with Trieste, the Empire's major port, and hence with the Mediterranean Sea and the Suez Canal, which had opened in 1869).

In Vienna he was invited to a party and there met Berta Pollak, the young Vienna-born daughter of a rich linen merchant, David Arthur Pollak and his wife Regine nee Obernbreit. Soon after that they got married (1875). They had 5 children: 4 daughters ( Laura, Jeanette, Tini, Hanni) and one son, Philipp, whom he named after his father.

He received his "Heimat-Schein" only in 1887.

In 1889 he visited the Paris World Exhibition (for which the Eiffel Tower was constructed), and after seeing this he hit on the idea of printing souvenir pictures of the exhibition palace/Eiffel on silk handkerchieves, which was a novelty at the time. It was a big success, and enabled him to start his own furniture business. He was so good at making and designing furniture, he was asked to design for the Emperor. Registered in Vienna as "Hoflieferant" (purveyor to the Court).

His address in Vienna: Mariannen-Gasse 20. His shop was on Schoenbrunner Hauptstrasse 122.

The inscription on Ignatz Kron's tombstone in Vienna Zentralfriedhof (he was 51 when he died):

'"Musterhaft als Gatte, Vater und Verwandter, stets bemüht um das Wohl seiner Mitmenschen, im Leben allgemein geehrt, im Tode allgemein betrauert. Nicht sein Leichenstein, sein Leben ist sein Denkmal."

'('Exemplary husband, father and relative, ceaselessly striving for the welfare of his fellow men, honoured in life, mourned by all in death. His life, not his tombstone, serves as his monument'.)'

• Kron Berta 75 Year(s) 11/08/1930 11/10/1930 ZENTRALFRIEDHOF I. TOR 51 7 28
• Kron Ignaz 52 Year(s) 08/22/1903 08/24/1903 ZENTRALFRIEDHOF I. TOR 51 7 28
• Spitz Johanna 52 Year(s) 03/03/1937 03/05/1937 ZENTRALFRIEDHOF I. TOR 51 7 28